The present invention relates to a crusher and a process and an apparatus for effecting material preparation using the crusher as well as to a testing method using the resulting prepared product. More specifically, the invention relates to a crusher to be used for crushing, blending, homogenization and transference of materials; to a process and an apparatus for material preparation using the crusher for processing materials by, for example, crushing, blending, homogenization and transference; to a testing method for analysis, quality assessment, organoleptic testing, observation or recording (in the following, referred to sometimes merely as testing) using the product of the material preparation; and to a process for producing a processed product.
In realizing testing for examining a material of, for example, an organism, organic matter or chemical product, for the components, biological or physicochemical properties, particle size, characteristic reaction of a tissue against shearing or crushing or so on of the material using a product of material preparation obtained by shearing or crushing the material, it is necessary to prepare the material in accordance with each specific purpose of examination.
Conventional apparatuses brought into practical use as sample preparation apparatuses for realizing homogenization of materials by shearing or crushing are based on mechanisms for pressing or grinding of the material and for rotating cutter blades. There have been found, as commercial apparatuses, a pressing crusher using a hydraulic press and a crusher using pressing drums in which the material is forced to pass through a narrow interspace between neighboring drums, for those of pressing the material; a wet type Teflon-homogenizer of Potter LBM suited for soft materials, a crusher of a stone-mill type suited for hard material and a crusher of a grinder type, for grinding of the material; and various rotary mills, for rotating of cutter blades.
These conventional apparatuses are suited for crushing specific materials of constant properties, such as hardness, moisture content and so on. Nevertheless, they are poorly suited as an apparatus for shearing, crushing, blending or homogenizing commonly used materials having a hardness, moisture content and so on, which are different from each other, such as agricultural products and foods. Therefore, a large installation or a crusher of complex structure may be required for these common objects with a concomitant shortcoming of greater energy consumption. For example, a pressing crusher, a dry crusher of the stone-mill type, a grinding crusher and a rotary cutter crusher are suitable for crushing materials having a dry tissue, such as seeds of plants, and homogenization can be attained using a blender of varying types after the crushing. Nevertheless, it is difficult to crush soft materials. A wet homogenizer of the Potter LBM type is suitable for grinding and homogenizing soft materials, such as germination tissue of seeds, tissues of roots and so on, but is difficult to crush hard materials.
The preparation products obtained by these crushing/homogenizing apparatuses are present in general in a form of a mixture or fine powder. No apparatus has hitherto been brought into the market, which can separate each selectively classified fraction of each component of the processed material by a minute classification based on the difference in, for example, the particle size or the susceptibility to shearing or crushing, within a single processing work, such as shearing, crushing or sieving.
The conventional apparatuses found in the market are adapted for the cases where the prepared product is nearly the same with respect to the constituent components, composition and so on, as in a factory or laboratory in which relatively sufficient time can be spared for the material preparation. The conventional technique has, however, a difficulty in that too large a time interval is required for performing analysis of the material with pretreatment operation and may not be able to respond to the case of, for example, a wheat harvesting field in which the harvested lots of crop having different moisture contents and different qualities are transported by trucks at an interval of about ten minutes and the quality assessment for each lot by the analysis should be terminated within such an interval. Moreover, conventional apparatuses are large in size and complex in their mechanisms and, therefore, not easy to clean after the processing operation, since disassemblage of the apparatus may be required, so that, in some cases, not removed residues of crop fragments clinging on the inner wall of the apparatus may cause pollution and may bring about a false assessment of the subsequent lots of the crop.
As discussed above, conventional techniques can not attain a continuous material preparation under processing by shearing/crushing and classification within a short period of time with a simple cleaning operation for non-uniform materials having different physicochemical properties with different components and compositions of tissues thereof. No apparatus has hitherto been developed for solving the above technical theme.
An object of the present invention is to provide a crusher of simple construction, which can process materials easily by shearing, crushing, blending, homogenizing and so on with a lower energy consumption while scarcely suffering from clogging of the apparatus, even for materials having different physicochemical properties with different components and compositions of the tissues thereof.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a process and an apparatus for effecting a material preparation using the above crusher.
A further object of the present invention is to provide a process and an apparatus for effecting a material preparation in which the preparation product prepared as above can be classified.
A still further object of the present invention is to provide a testing method which can serve for a testing, such as a high accuracy analysis, using the preparation product obtained by the above process as the test sample.
A still further object of the present invention is to attain a process for producing processed products, such as foods, industrial articles and others, from the preparation product obtained by the above process.
The present invention consists of the following crusher, process and apparatus embodiments for effecting material preparation and testing method:
A first crusher embodiment comprises:
a first pressing element having a first pressing face provided thereon with protrusions in a form of an isolate island surrounded by depressed marginal spaces, the protrusions being disposed not only in first parallel rows but also in second parallel rows which extend in a direction crossing the first parallel rows, and
a second pressing element to be held in engagement with the first pressing element when being pressed thereonto, the second pressing element having a second pressing face provided thereon with protrusions which are disposed in a pattern similar to that of the protrusions of the first pressing element,
wherein the protrusions of the first and the second pressing elements are disposed in such a relation that the protrusions of the first or the second pressing element will engage with corresponding depressed marginal spaces on the second or the first pressing face of the second or the first pressing element, respectively, so as to permit crushing of the material supplied to the interspaces therebetween.
The crusher of the first embodiment, wherein the protrusions and the depressed marginal spaces of the first and the second pressing elements are formed in such a manner that first parallel ridges interspaced by first parallel grooves on each pressing element are cut open by second parallel grooves thereon extending in a direction crossing the first parallel grooves.
The crusher of the first embodiment, wherein the first, and the second pressing faces are formed on a plane, curved, arcuate or cylindrical surface.
The crusher of the first embodiment, wherein it comprises a mechanism for moving at least one of the pressing elements so as to move the protrusions of either of the pressing faces relatively to the others, while both the pressing elements are being pressed onto each other.
A crusher of a second embodiment comprises
a first rotatable pressing element in a form of a cylinder having a first cylindrical pressing face comprising screw sections disposed at both end regions of the cylinder and a crushing section disposed in the central region of the cylinder, wherein each of the screw sections is furnished with first parallel helical ridges interspaced by corresponding first parallel helical grooves or with second parallel helical ridges interspaced by corresponding second parallel helical grooves, respectively, the first ridges and grooves extending on the cylindrical pressing face in reverse turning sense to the second parallel helical ridges and grooves on the cylindrical pressing face in the other screw section, and wherein the crushing section is provided with protrusions of a form of isolate islands surrounded by depressed marginal spaces, the islands being formed in such a manner that the parallel helical ridges in extension of those on either one of the screw sections are cut by the parallel helical grooves in extension of those on the other one of the screw sections, and
a second cylindrical pressing element to be held in engagement with the first pressing element rotatably in counter sense to the rotation of the first pressing element, the second pressing element having a second pressing face comprising screw sections and a crushing section and provided with parallel helical ridges, parallel helical grooves and protrusions disposed in patterns similar to those of the first pressing face of the first pressing element,
wherein the ridges and protrusions of the first and the second pressing elements are disposed in such a relation that the ridges and the protrusions on the first or the second pressing element will engage with corresponding grooves and depressed marginal spaces on the second or the first pressing element, respectively, so as to permit crushing of the material supplied to interspaces therebetween.
An apparatus for effecting material preparation, comprising a crusher as defined above.
An apparatus for effecting material preparation, comprising
a crusher as defined above,
a material port for supplying the material to be processed to the crusher and
a classifier for classifying the crushed product from the crusher.
A process for effecting material preparation comprising the steps of
supplying the material to be processed to a crusher as defined above and
effecting crushing, mixing or homogenization of the so-supplied material by the crusher.
A process for effecting material preparation comprising the steps of
supplying the material to be processed to a crusher as defined above,
effecting crushing, mixing or homogenization of the so-supplied material by the crusher and
classifying the so-processed material.
A preparation product comprising the product resulting from the process defined above.
A testing method using the preparation product as defined above.
A method for producing a processed product using the preparation product as defined above.